Videographer finds his muse for filmmaking in Provincetown

Saturday

Mar 2, 2013 at 12:01 AMMar 2, 2013 at 2:20 AM

Filmmaker Daniel Gómez Llata has gone to great lengths to find his muse. Long, quiet days in the Outer Cape’s offseason, so conducive to creative work for so many artists, is where Llata’s journey finally came together — but not right away...

Rob Phelps

Filmmaker Daniel Gómez Llata has gone to great lengths to find his muse.

“I’ve long sought to find my own creative niche in the artistic world,” he says, “to dream up a work of art that was completely my own and which did not resemble anything imagined by anyone else before.”

For years, Llata did not know what medium he would express his vision through. “I dabbled in photography,” he says. “I discovered video only after I arrived in Provincetown in the winter of 2006.”

Long, quiet days in the Outer Cape’s offseason, so conducive to creative work for so many artists, is where Llata’s journey finally came together — but not right away.

Llata describes his trajectory as “that of a vagabond.” The native Los Angelean of Mexican decent studied Spanish translation at California State University, delving into the work of literary masters such as Gabriel García Márquez. He earned his bachelor’s degree in 1991, moved on to the Monterey Institute of International Studies, where he received his master’s in international policy studies in 1999, and then traveled to Spain, where he completed his formal education with a certificate in Hispanic studies from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid in 1995. After that, he circled the globe teaching English as a second language, all the while searching for that vessel through which to express his artistic spirit.

A self-described Provincetown washashore, Llata says he’d never heard of the town before but found his way here through friends and, again like so many creative souls, made it his home, purchasing a condo in the East End with his partner Bill Sullivan. For about three years, he says, he took seasonal work, painting, writing and shooting photographs in the offseason. He read a lot, notably more Márquez and Annie Dillard.

Meanwhile, he found himself growing into the community. This summer marks his first as chair of the Carnival parade. “I’ve worked with [longtime Carnival chair] Roger Chauvette for years,” he says, “so I’ve got a pretty good idea of what I’m getting myself into.”

Employed as a videographer from 2007 to 2011 for Wild Productions, the video company that operates aboard Provincetown’s Dolphin Fleet, as well as for the Hyannis Whale Watcher, he discovered a passion for a craft that gradually became his art. The job, he says, “opened my horizons. It taught me everything I needed to know about digital video so I felt I was ready.” Almost.

At last he knew it was film he wanted to pursue. But “I had no idea what this project would look like, or even what it would be about. I was more into creating a mood and an ambience in which to set my story, rather than to lay down anything really concrete in regards to a linear narrative with a clear beginning, middle and end.”

He knew he was going for something “kind of like the magic realism genre of Latin American literature,” he explains. So he turned back to his favorite master of that genre and hit the road again. Traveling to Mexico City, Llata literally followed Márquez’s creative process where the great Colombian writer famously forced himself to begin “A Hundred Years of Solitude” by barricading himself in a Mexico City hotel room and not leaving until he emerged with a manuscript.

In two weeks, Llata came out with a very rough draft for his first film, “13 Cemetery Road,” which, after four more years of labor and fun, would become his first short film.

Llata remains a bit secretive about the plot. While still working out some details, he allows that he’s drawn heavily on the history, communities and natural setting of the Outer Cape though is quick to add that the story is completely make believe — it’s magic realism, after all. Things can get kinda whacky.

He credits his friend the former Provincetown selectman Richard B. Olson for the screenplay. Olson took an interest “even before I set pen to paper. [He] drew up the screenplay by arranging the story into individual scenes and tinkering with the dialogue. The result was as much of a surprise to me as it will be to the audience. Watching the characters spring to life on my computer screen is unlike any painting or photograph I’ve ever made.”

Llata credits Provincetown artist Jay Critchley as his mentor and the late Eliot “Ellie” Castillo as another significant source of inspiration. Llata wrote a juicy “love interest” role for his friend Castillo, who plays herself as the notorious street performer carting her sound system perched atop a red wagon through town. The film was not complete at the time of Castillo’s death two years ago. But, Llata says, Castillo encouraged him to ask Critchley to fill her shoes when she realized she might not be stepping back in for the final scenes.

Over the past four years, mostly during winter, Llata’s work widened into a community project akin to the production of the local television station’s emerging series “Offseason.” Llata describes the two endeavors not as “friendly rivalry” but simply as “overlapping.” Many of the cast members, he says, appear in both. The soundtrack for Llata’s film also features local favorites Zoë Lewis, Rollie Skreezlet and Skreezlet’s band The Daggers.

“It would be impossible for me to thank each of the literally dozens of people who’ve helped out either in production, logistical support or by appearing as an actor in one or more of the scenes. We’ll do that at the cast party,” Llata says. “I should definitely thank Jay for lighting the proverbial fire under my chair, Olson for writing the very unique screenplay and most of all my partner Bill for all his steadfast support. Without my Bill, there’d be no film at all.”

“I’m impressed and humbled at the way that so many people have stepped up to volunteer their time, meeting with me in the most inhospitable places at the most inconvenient times,” Llata says. Especially, he notes, “Jay Critchley, shivering at the frozen top of the Pilgrim Monument wearing the most unpredictable costume that only Ellie herself could have dreamed up.”

As for Critchley, he considers his unexpected star-turn as “definitely a career move,” adding that it’s especially “nice to have hair again. And I never looked so good in a stars-and-stripes bikini.”

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